Methodological Issues

Methodological and conceptual issues regarding occupational psychosocial coronary heart disease epidemiology.

Purpose– This article is intended to stimulate theoretical reflection in international comparative studies in library and information science (comparative LIS).Design/methodology/approach– The need for theory is emphasized and shortcomings in comparative LIS in respect of theory are identified. On the basis of literature from other comparative disciplines, a framework for examining issues of metatheory, methodology and methods is constructed. Against this background the role of theory and metatheory in the literature of comparative LIS is evaluated. General observations are illustrated using examples selected from comparative studies in LIS.Findings– Much of the literature of comparative LIS is atheoretical and based on assumptions that reflect naive empiricism. Most comparativists in LIS fail to link their work to that of colleagues, so that no body of theory is built up. Insufficient use is made of theory from other social science disciplines. There is a little evidence of awareness of metatheoretical assumptions in the sociological, teleological, ontological, epistemological and ethical dimensions.Research limitations/implications– While general observations are presented about the literature of comparative LIS, this is not a bibliometric study. Issues of methodology and method are not dealt with.Practical implications– Recommendations are made for improving teaching and research in comparative LIS. Concepts presented here are of value to the wider LIS community, particularly in internationally oriented research and practice.Originality/value– Since the 1980s there has been very little conceptual and methodological reflection on comparative LIS. This article alerts the LIS profession to new thinking in other comparative disciplines.

With increasing concerns regarding rapidly expanding health care costs, cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) provides a methodology to assess whether marginal gains from new technology are worth the increased costs. In the arena of prenatal diagnosis, particular methodological and ethical concerns include whether the effects of such testing on individuals other than the patient are included, how termination of pregnancy is included in the models, redundancy of screening and diagnostic methods, and how screening may reassure or cause anxiety in patients depending on their results. The existing literature has demonstrated cost-effectiveness of screening and diagnosis of neural tube defects, Down syndrome, and cystic fibrosis in the general population. Screening for genetic disorders which have a higher prevalence among particular groups has also been shown to be cost effective, including diseases such as hemoglobinopathies and Tay-Sachs disease. Understanding the methodology and salient issues of CEA is critical for researchers, editors and clinicians to accurately interpret results of the growing body of cost-effectiveness studies in prenatal diagnosis.

Reviewed by: The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics ed. by Manel Lacorte Alonso Abad Macheño Lacorte, Manel, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 700. ISBN 978-0-41581-378-5. The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics is a collection of articles that give an overview of current research fields in Hispanic applied linguistics. This book would be useful for graduate students and scholars specializing in Spanish Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Hispanic applied linguistics. It would give graduate students an overview of different fields being researched currently in Spanish SLA and applied linguistics because it covers a very wide range of topics and describes current research and history of the fields. It also covers sociocultural theory, service learning, cognitive and generative perspectives, and education and teaching applications (such as Spanish in the health professions, Spanish in special education, etc.). This handbook would also be very useful for teachers and college professors because it covers such topics as culture, civilization, and literatures throughout the curriculum, publishing, and discourse analysis. Finally, it would be also useful for administrators or anyone interested in language policies because there is a section that covers the social and political contexts of Spanish. The work is divided in five sections: perspectives on learning Spanish, Spanish teaching, Spanish in the professions, discourse analysis, and the social and political contexts of Spanish. The first section informs the reader about the theoretical contributions of Spanish SLA to different subfields and how those contributions have been applied to learning and teaching Spanish. Each chapter in the book is subdivided into three parts: a description of the subfield and its history, current issues being researched, and their application to Spanish learning, and the future and direction of the field. The first chapter explores the applications of sociocultural theory, and how [End Page 509] this theory is the genesis of a collaborative approach to teaching Spanish in the classroom, and a more holistic redefinition of linguistic competence that does not discriminate cultural and linguistic competence as two separate entities. Chapter 2 gives an overview of Hispanic pragmatics and discourse analysis. The third chapter is dedicated to the study of cognitive approaches to second language learning. It covers such issues as second language processing, attention and awareness, input processing, and neurocognitive approaches. The fourth chapter deals with the application of generative perspective to Spanish second language research. The core concepts of the chapter are the relationship between first language (L1) and second language (L2), and the role of input in SLA. The last chapter of the section addresses sociolinguistic approaches to Hispanic applied linguistics, ranging from bilingualism to classroom learners, study abroad language learners, immersion learners, heritage speakers, and immigrant bilinguals. Section 2 centers on issues and environments in Spanish teaching and teacher education. Chapter 7 offers an overview of the pedagogy of Spanish as a L2, centering on theoretical and methodological issues. The following chapters in this section deal with different aspects of methodological and curricular issues related to Spanish programs, both at the college level and the primary and secondary school level. They include curricular issues such as teacher education, Spanish as a heritage language, service learning, program articulation, content-based programs, the teaching of cultures and literatures throughout the curriculum, online teaching, the technological contexts for teaching Spanish, assessment of Spanish, and critical approaches to teaching Spanish. The third section offers a comprehensive survey of Spanish in the professions. It includes chapters on interpreting and translation, lexicography, computational Spanish, publishing, Spanish in the health professions, and special education. There is one chapter dedicated to forensic Spanish, or the intersection between Spanish and law, in which issues such as the alteration of pragmatic meaning by interpreters in court appearances, and other judicial proceedings, are discussed. The fourth section of the book is dedicated to the discourses of Spanish: such topics as academic Spanish, media discourse, commercial discourse, intercultural communication discourse, and politics and discourse are covered in this section. The chapters in this section define the scope, history and tenets of each discourse. For instance, the chapter dedicated to intercultural communication discourse offers an overview of the field through the lens of...

As the field of education becomes increasingly complex and demanding, researchers more than ever before need to work at the frontiers of knowledge in order to understand the current global issues and problems of education. This calls for rigorous research whose findings are to inform government decision and policy. Also, the effectiveness of any educational intervention needs to be evaluated to know what works and what does not work. The ultimate goal is to re-shape the system of education appropriately. In examining the use of randomized experiments in educational research and evaluation, this paper highlights its merits, methodological and ethical issues, and the problems involved in using randomized experiments in the school setting. It suggests the need for researchers to update their skills in the use of randomized experiments through capacity building to ensure that findings from educational research and evaluation are creditable and defensible.KEY WORDS: Randomized experiment; Educational research; Evaluation; Research ethics; Methodological issues.

Background There is an increasing need for a worldwide professional integration of conventional medicine and traditional/complementary whole medical systems (WMSs). However, the integration is perceived by conventional medicine as problematic or unacceptable, because of a supposed lack of evidence for specific effects of WMSs therapies and supposed prescientific or unscientific paradigms of WMSs. Objectives To review the literature on the features of WMSs, similarities and differences between conventional medicine and WMSs, and scientific and clinical practice issues that should be dealt with in order to promote the integration process. Methods A critical, narrative review of the literature on six WMSs. Results and Conclusions Key factors for the integration of WMSs and conventional medicine are as follows: legal frameworks, quality standards, high-quality research on safety and efficacy of WMS interventions, infrastructure, and financial resources. For scientific assessment of WMSs, there are unresolved ontological, epistemological, and methodological issues and issues of diagnostics, therapy delivery, and outcome assessment in clinical practice. Future research not only should be directed at quality assurance and generating the necessary data on safety and efficacy/effectiveness but also should address more fundamental (ontological, epistemological, and methodological) issues, in order to overcome the differences between WMSs and conventional medicine.

The theme of this year’s CSCL 2013 conference—“To see the world and a grain of sand: Learning across levels of space, time and scale”—targets a provocative challenge for CSCL, namely that the interactions of collaborative learning be understood, supported and analyzed at multiple levels. As the conference call puts it, “the attention to the theoretical, methodological and technological issues of addressing research at multiple levels is highly relevant to current research in CSCL, as well as to developing an emerging understanding of the epistemological and methodological issues that will shape our intellectual efforts well into the future” (http://isls.org/cscl2013). The attempt to bridge across levels of analysis—in CSCL theory, analysis and practice— stands at the forefront of CSCL research today. CSCL research typically investigates processes at the individual, small-group and community units of analysis. However, individual CSCL studies generally each focus on only one of these units. Moreover, there is little data-based analysis of how the three levels are connected, although it is clear that such connections are crucially important to understanding and orchestrating learning in CSCL settings. The introduction to the last issue of ijCSCL (Stahl 2012b) proposed that the levels of individual learning, group cognition and community knowledge building may be connected by emergent interactional resources, which can mediate between the levels.

Nordic College of Caring Sciences in the years to come

This paper examines the methodological problems and issues of the cost/benefit analysis which was structured by the FTC for purpose of evaluating the Unavailability Rule and the current proposed amendments to the Rule. The discussion is organized along key items in a cost/benefit analysis: objectives, assumptions, alternatives, costs, benefits, and impact.

Do randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating endometrial scratching suffer from methodological issues including insufficient trial registration, statistical errors or irreproducibility, randomisation errors or miscellaneous issues? The majority of RCTs investigating endometrial scratching have methodological issues. A large number of small RCTs investigating the effectiveness of endometrial scratching prior to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI)/intercourse have reported favourable findings. Subsequently, systematic reviews incorporating these RCTs yielded meta-analyses in favour of endometrial scratching. Endometrial scratching has been widely adopted by infertility specialists around the world. Recently, an international RCT including 1364 women reported no benefit from endometrial scratching before IVF. We evaluated several methodological issues of RCTs investigating the effectiveness of endometrial scratching prior to IVF and IUI/intercourse. We identified 25 RCTs for IVF and 12 RCTs for IUI/intercourse with full-text publication. We assessed the RCTs on the following criteria: adequacy of trial registration, statistical issues (description of statistical methods and reproducibility of univariable statistical analysis), excessive similarity or difference in baseline characteristics that is not compatible with chance (Monte Carlo simulations and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test) and miscellaneous methodological issues. Of 25 RCTs evaluating endometrial scratching prior to IVF, only eight (32%) had adequate trial registration. In total, 10 (40%) RCTs had issues regarding statistical methods. Nine (69%, 13 applicable) RCTs had at least one inconsistency between reported and reproduced univariable statistical analysis for categorical baseline/intermediate characteristics. Statistical results of at least one outcome were not reproducible in 14 (74%, 19 applicable) RCTs. Only two (8%) RCTs had none of the above issues. Suggested by the simulations, these RCTs did not significantly violate the null hypothesis that the baseline characteristics were the results of a properly conducted randomisation process (P= 0.4395).Of 12 IUI/intercourse RCTs, only 2 (17%) had adequate trial registration. In total, five (42%) studies had issues of statistical methods. Inconsistency between reported and reproduced univariable analysis for baseline/intermediate categorical variable(s) was found in four (57%, 7 applicable) RCTs. Statistical analysis was not reproducible for at least one outcome in eight (80%, 10 applicable) studies. All RCTs had at least one of the above issues. These RCTs were inconsistent with the null hypothesis that their baseline characteristics were the results of proper randomised allocation (P= 1.659*10-7). We were unable to assess RCTs which were not published as full-text papers. We could not analyse individual participant data to investigate possible reasons for statistical inconsistencies. The method to infer the likelihood of proper random sampling rests on assumptions including independent baseline characteristics, simple randomisation and no publication bias. The methodological issues common to RCTs evaluating endometrial scratching may have biased the results of the trials. Further development and validation of these novel methods may be helpful for the critical appraisal of RCTs. No external funding was sought to support this work. B.W.M. is supported by a National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Practitioner Fellowship (GNT1082548). B.W.M. reports consultancy for ObsEva, Merck and Guerbet. D.W. is supported by a grant from the Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg, Austria (PMU Research Fund-PMU FFF Number: L-18/02/006-WET) and by Drs Haackert Foundation, Germany. S.L. is an author of a trial included in this study, an author of an included systematic review and a Cochrane editor. All other authors have no conflicts of interest. N/A.

For transgenic seeds to contribute to agricultural development and food security, transaction cost-related factors, gender issues, institutional constraints and smallholder farmers’ preferences will have to be addressed. In the light of the prevailing controversies and debates, this paper partially reviews the transgenic seeds’ impact on the literature to assess their scale neutrality and identify the methodological and research issues for future impact studies. In terms of methodology, selection bias, lack of explicit attention to risk, endogeneity, dependence on single season data, comparing average outcomes for users versus non-users, and using recall survey data are identified as the most important weaknesses of the existing impact studies. Further issues include heterogeneous impacts on rural poverty and farm income, scale-neutrality, dis-adoption, desirable and undesirable features of transgenic seeds, and their potential crowding-out effect on transgenic seeds on traditional varieties. The paper has argued and presented the reasons for non-scale neutrality of transgenic seeds, at access and impact levels. Integrating transgenic technology into the African rural development agenda needs addressing agricultural biotechnology transfer mechanisms sensitive to gender, farmer heterogeneity and income distribution for which there is a need to create public-private partnerships as these criteria are less appealing to the private sector. Key words: Transgenic seeds, heterogeneous impacts, scale neutrality, methodological issues, policy options.

As people around the world experience a devastating pandemic, it is critical that policy-makers consider the methodological and measurement issues that might be associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health indicators. This commentary uses four primary variables to illustrate measurement and methodological issues that can complicate comparisons between jurisdictions. Jurisdiction refers to a variety of geographic areas, such as a country, a state, or a province/territory. These variables play a critical role in determining how we understand the trajectory of disease spread. These variables also contribute to our understanding of prevention strategies and their associated efficacy, reflecting the impact of COVID-19 on hospitals. It is critical for public health stakeholders and the public to recognize that these four simple variables can vary substantially across jurisdictions.

Worldwide, there is a remarkable increase in Internet use, with a current penetration rate of 62%. This widespread Internet use and the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) preventive measures provide opportunities for data collection using the Internet in healthcare research. No recent studies have been conducted regarding the methodological issues of asynchronous Internet research that employed opened-ended questions to explore providers' and patients' experiences. This study utilizes prior research to explore methodological issues that affect online research using open-ended questions to obtain health data. The electronic databases searched were PubMed, CINAHL, and full-text Ovid. Reference lists and the Journal of Medical Internet Research were manually searched. The search strategy was based on the PRISMA flow diagram. Articles published between January 2003 and May 2020 were searched. Inclusion criteria were asynchronous online researcher-led studies that used open-ended questions to explore healthcare issues. Methodological issues were extracted from the selected studies. The evidence suggests that factors such as technical/website study/survey design issues, smartphone study applications, use of reminders, incentives, overrecruiting participants, using a combination of asynchronous and synchronous methods, trustworthiness, ethical and security issues affect the quality of data obtained in online health research. Asynchronous online research methods with open-ended questions could be used to collect high-quality data from patients, healthcare providers, and other participants in self-isolation, quarantine, and in diverse locations. However, researchers should be aware of the identified methodological issues. Future research could explore methodological issues and data quality in combined asynchronous and synchronous data collection methods.

Cost-effectiveness analysis of pharmacological treatments in schizophrenia: critical review of results and methodological issues

Principles of drug abuse liability assessment in laboratory animals